So to continue September's adventures, and pick up where my livejournal left off, I'll give it a go right here and see how this new blog suits me.  As you'll remember, I left off with the end of Cowtown.

I took the Monday off to recoup which is perfectly necessary after the totally exhilarating dance weekend (balboa!  Vintage gloves!  Corn!), and then I made the fatal mistake of going back to work for two days before I went off to see my princesses in New Mexico.  Apparently in my absence, my coworkers mistakenly did a lot of bad things to my accounts.  So I got to spend a couple days stressing over that and cleaning up the mess, but to be fair, they helped out a lot.  I think I was more annoyed by the jerkwads who don't do anything at all.  Whatever, more about that later.  Despite the panic attack that was work, I left it all behind me for PrincessCon Southwest!  The convening of the four kingdoms in the mysterious land of Santa Fe!  Okay, it wasn't quite that royal, but it certainly was awesome.  I was psyched because I was meeting Heather and Terry in Dallas for the final flight to meet Hana in Albuquerque.  I also prefer flying Southwest because it's cheaper (at least in luggage terms, gaz) but American was quite nice.  And though we didn't sit next to each other on the plane, it was awesome to land together and find Hana.

It was about an hour's drive from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, which was easily filled with sightseeing the glorious New Mexican terrain, silly photos from the backseat, and of course, a princess singalong.  There's really no other way to go.  We got to Hana's parents' house (which is flipping AMAZING), and relaxed for a bit after our various plane rides, got out the crafting supplies, examined our new crowns.  Can't be princesses without crowns, duh.  I must say, the crown of Her Serene Royal Highness Princess Mayapple (aka me) is perfect.  We all wandered around for a little bit with our crowns on, and we also agreed to wear our PrincessCon t-shirts together while we went out to lunch.  More than a few people asked about it, and we really had no shame in talking about it.  They were awesome t-shirts.

Hana took us to downtown Santa Fe for some much needed sustenance.  I even ate the beans.  Then we wandered around the little area.  It's very picturesque, not too hot, lots of stuff to look at.  We made our first stop on the Chocolate Trail (yes, it exists, no, it is not a metaphor for something), at a very cute little shop.  We took lots of photographic evidence.  We meandered until we thought the meter was going to run out and hit our next stop on the trail.  This place specialized in authentic drinking chocolate from the ancient cultures, which was interesting to begin with, I mean, drinking the drinks that the Aztecs, sounds like a great idea?  Oh, boy.  So we each picked out one, with plans to try each others, Heather got the Colonial style, I chose the Parisian brew that was the pick of Marie Antoinette, Terry chose the Aztec warrior chocolate, and Hana got the chili pepper hot chocolate.  I mean, they all sounded reasonable, interesting, mine was supposed to have orange water in it.  Sure, I'll go with it.  Wow, they were bad, I mean, really really bad.  Heather's was fairly bitter, mine tasted chalky, Terry's was okay, but Hana's took the cake.  It did not taste like chocolate, it tasted like oil with chili pepper in it and burned everyone's throat.  We all agreed that stop was a fail.  In retrospect, the peach raspberry pie should've been my choice.

Anyway, we moved on to stop number three, praying for redemption, and it was a cute little place with not much to it, but it did have some lovely looking treats and a fun 50's fridge, and we all ate our chocolate out front and took more fun pictures.  We were starting to get a little sugar buzzed, but we made it to our last stop, a particular delight called Chuck's Nuts.  How could we resist?  We decided to get a box of treats for later.  And take our picture in front of the sign.  Princesses rule.

Back at Hana's house we had dinner with her parents, took a little more rest since we did walk a bit.  As a note, Hana's mom has A LOT of stuffed animals.  It's quite interesting.  We sat and talked girl stuff, looked at pictures from last year's PrincessCon, and watched the video.  We are pretty hilarious.  And after a certain point we ate our truffles, and then went out to sit in the hot tub.  This was a good and smart decision.  What was not a good and smart decision was not prepping the hot tub before we went outside in our bikinis.  It was probably about 50 degrees, but once we were in the hot tub, it was awesome.  We could see all the stars in the sky because it's so clear and there's very little light pollution, and we could all relax and chat more.

And after a nice long soak (we probably spent an hour and a half out there, possibly more), we decided to spend every night in the hot tub, and hit the sack.  For Friday held Princess craft time!